Younger offspring: (Singing, to the tune of “Head and Shoulders”) Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdome-e-e-en.
Bulgy eyes and antennae.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen!
Dr. Free-Ride: Let me guess: you’ve been learning about insects?
Younger offspring: Uh huh!
Dr. Free-Ride: So what do you know about insects besides the names of the parts of their bodies?
Younger offspring: They have six legs. And they lay eggs.
Dr. Free-Ride: What kind of insects did you guys study?
Younger offspring: Walking stick. They camouflage so nobody can catch them.
Dr. Free-Ride: That must be handy.
Elder offspring: Let me tell you about a butterfly — it’s called the leaf butterfly — and every time it sits down to rest on a dead tree it looks like a dead leaf.
Younger offspring: Some insects sit on flowers, and some pollenate our garden.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do we need insects to pollenate the garden?
Younger offspring: (Reaching) So it can help the earth …
Elder offspring: Here’s what pollination does. An insect — for example, a bee — gets nectar from a flower and rubs against pollen. It gets the pollen grains, and then it flies to the same kind of flower but a different one and rubs the pollen off, and that makes a seed.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. So is the bee trying to pollenate the flowers?
Elder offspring: I don’t know …
Younger offspring: I think that the butterflies come to drink the nectar out of the flowers with their curly tongues, and the pollination just happens because they want to drink nectar.
Dr. Free-Ride: Good for the flowers to have tasty nectar if they’re going to get pollinated.
Elder offspring: That “long curly tongue” is called a proboscis.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you remember the names of the stages in the life cycle of an insect?
Elder offspring: First there are eggs. Then, there are the larvae.
Younger offspring: Like caterpillars!
Elder offspring: Then there’s the pupa, with the cocoon, when the metamorphosis happens.
Dr. Free-Ride: Into?
Elder offspring: The grown-up insect!
Dr. Free-Ride: Favorite insect?
Younger offspring: All of them!
Dr. Free-Ride: Really? Because I know there are some you don’t care for in the house.
Elder offspring: My favorite is the silkworm! ‘Cause we have some at school.
Thanks!
I love Sprog Blogging, especially the songs and illustrations.
(Now, where do I go to complain about the new front page?)
John, now that we’re up to 43 blogs (yikes!), a new homepage design was a necessity. It will work out though (and you may even grow to love it …)
Useful information about the new design:
1. There’s an alphabetic list of all the blogs in the left side-bar, about halfway down the page. (I’m told there will also be a pull-down menu of all the blogs, probably near the top of the page.)
2. If you click on the “Last 24 Hours” Channel (left side-bar, near the top of the page), you’ll get the reverse-chronological listing of posts from all blogs — basically, what you’re used to seeing from the old Sb homepage.
And thanks for reading the Sprog Blogs! (The sprogs know that they’re the ones driving my traffic!)
Auntie Kazy enjoyed the drawings, song (because I did NOT sing it), and part about the life cycles of your favorite OUTDOOR critters.
Have you been able to get any plants into the garden that the butterflies will like?